There were far, far worse episodes in the first season. Born to the Purple remains one of my all-time favourites for 'most boring' tag. It's actually put me to sleep three times during viewings. I'd also have to say Infection and The Quality of Mercy don't exactly do it for me either.
Understandable, but I'll still let you know that they aren't the same show at all. And in my book it's about as good as B5, quality-wise, albeit very different. As a former Buffy-avoider, I'll say that if you give the series a proper chance you'll probably also find it better than you suppose. It's strength is more in watching the characters over time than in the (usually lame) monsters-of-the-week.
The 10 lowest P5 rated episodes on Lurker's are: HTML: 6.00, The Gathering (title not shown onscreen) 6.33, Infection 6.41, TKO 6.79, Born to the Purple 6.82, The War Prayer 6.93, Grey 17 Is Missing 6.99, Midnight on the Firing Line 7.05, Soul Hunter 7.21, Knives 7.29, The Quality of Mercy What a thread like this is perfect for is displaying how subjective it all becomes when rating episodes. Sure there can be general trends, but bottom line is that there is tremendous variance in how we rate them.
I'm not sure if this doesn't reflect some sort of anti Season 1 bias - 8 out of 10 episodes are Pilot or Season 1 episodes. I could name few Season 3 or Seaon 5 episodes I'd clearly rate below Born to the Purple, Midnight, or the Quality of Mercy.
To be fair, those ratings were taken after the shows aired initially I believe, so they don't have anything else to comapre with except those that came before.
I don't have a problem with the majority of the list. Episodes like Infection, Born to the Purple, TKO, The Quality of Mercy are justifiably on there IMO. Season 1's often considered the weakest season (debatable, given season 5's first half of the year), and these episodes highlight why. There are a few surprises on there though; The War Prayer, Soul Hunter and Midnight on the Firing Line are far from bad IMO.
My main problem with "TKO" is that it's so...blah. The Ivanova subplot isn't bad and Theodore Bikel is always watchable, but overall I don't find this episode particularly memorable at all. It's...blah. It's not the worst episode of the series but it's not far off the worst, either.
I actually found the boxing plotline to be a pretty good one actually. When Walker first tried getting into the Mutai (sp?) and was shut down, I expected it to be another story where humans stick their heads in where they don't belong and get their asses promptly handed to them for it. So it was a pleasant surprise for me when the Aliens ended up welcoming Walker into their midst and opening up the Mutai for other humans to enter as well. Actually, it was around TKO that Babylon 5 suddenly got good for me. Just watched the two-parter episode in season 1, the name of which escapes me, and I'm really enjoying all the continuing buildup. All the times that planet showed up on screen, and I never gave a single thought to it!
^^ A Voice in the Wilderness. Honestly, I think the episode could have been tighter as one installment rather than two, but I totally understand the production limitations that caused Straczynski to spread the episode's ambition across two hours.
Me too. But I think it had more to do with the sentimental thing of seeing June Lockhart on tv again. I STILL think it was a CRYING SHAME there was no scene between her and Bill Mumy. ESPECIALLY given JMS's HORRIBLE stunt casting in later seasons like bringing in the awful Penn and Teller as the deplorably bad Rebo and Zooty.
Loved TKO. But I like the boxing eps. BSGs was good, as was Voyagers'. Angel's. Even the one on Smallville. The one on Charmed sucked, but then, so does that show. Loved Day of the Dead, too. One of my favs from B5 season 5. Even Penn and Teller were fun.